


not quite monstrous

by onakissgodknows



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Post-Apocalypse, allusions to eye!basira
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25273477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onakissgodknows/pseuds/onakissgodknows
Summary: Basira finds Daisy in the new world.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	not quite monstrous

Basira wakes up alone. She doesn’t know how long she was asleep, or if she really slept at all. She doesn’t know if she even _needs_ sleep anymore since everything changed. Maybe she only sleeps out of habit. Hand on her gun. Just in case.

She doesn’t know what happened, or _why_ everything’s different now. She supposes she could blame the Archivist – _Jon_. Jon, his name is Jon, and Basira needs to remember because she finds herself forgetting names and details all the time now.

Basira drums the names into her head as she walks. Jon. Martin. Melanie. Tim – though Tim’s dead now, Basira remembers, long dead. Elias, who she remembers because thinking of him makes her angry, a dull, muted feeling that Basira vaguely thinks ought to feel _more_. She thinks emotions used to feel stronger.

Ah, well.

Basira is looking for someone.

Detective Alice Tonner.

Daisy, her Daisy.

Basira doesn’t know if Daisy will know her when they meet, but she has to keep going. Basira puts one foot in front of the other and walks on. 

She is in a forest. She doesn’t know how long she’s been walking through the trees but she keeps walking. It’s possible she’s always been walking. Was the world before ever even real?

Daisy. She’s looking for Daisy, her Daisy.

Basira thinks she ought to feel more afraid than she does, but she’s not scared, not really. It doesn’t seem like this world even notices her. She walks through it like a ghost. The world is full of horrors, but Basira has always known _that_. The screams don’t bother her. She thinks she’s made an unconscious choice to tune it out.

Vaguely, she supposes she ought to wonder why she’s not one of the ones screaming. Vaguely, she concludes it’s because she has something she needs to do.

Why is she so numb? Is it only because everything is so awful she can’t even contemplate it? Is her brain protecting her from truths too horrible to witness?

Part of Basira hopes that is what’s happening. The other part of her suspects that she’s fallen too close to the monstrous side and the reason she doesn’t scream like the rest of them is because she’s complicit. The big bad monsters that run this new world look at Basira and smile because they see she’s one of them.

She should stop and help the people who scream. She had always thought her purpose was to help those who can’t help themselves, but Basira walks through the trees and the only thing she can think is that she has to find Daisy. Her Daisy.

She’s left the screams far behind now.

When the monster finally comes for her, Basira doesn’t hesitate. Draws her gun. Fires.

It bears down on her, all fur and dripping jaws and sharp teeth and claws and there’s nothing, _nothing_ human behind those eyes.

It’s not her, right? It can’t be her.

Basira fires her gun again and it glances off the beast like it’s nothing, but the noise has to alert everything nearby to what’s going on.

Its massive clawed foot connects with Basira and sends her flying through the air like she’s feather-light. She lands on her stomach and feels all the breath rush out of her chest. For a moment she lays there, presses her forehead to the ground.

_Okay, Hussain. Keep going_.

The gun is a few feet away and Basira drags herself toward it as best she can. The monster prowls. It’s toying with her. Daisy wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t. Not to Basira. Could she? 

Basira gets her hand on the gun just as the creature’s paw presses down on her back, shoving her into the ground. Claws dig in, piercing her clothes and her skin and Basira lets out a little yelp for the first time. Basira has had vague suspicions that death isn’t really possible anymore, but _pain_ – pain is still real. 

Before she can contemplate this for more than a moment, before the monster’s claws and jaws can clamp around her and rip her apart, another creature barrels into Basira’s attacker, knocking it aside. It’s a whirlwind of fur and claws as the two beasts fight until there is a victor, and the loser slinks away into the trees, bleeding but alive.

The newcomer turns its face to Basira where she lies on the ground, gun in her hands. The beast’s muzzle is bloody, teeth stained with red. Basira scrambles to her feet, gun raised. Finger on the trigger.

She knows what she should do. She knows what Daisy would do.

The beast in front of her lowers its head, golden eyes meeting hers, lips curled into a snarl. The expression in her eyes is too intense, too human for it to not be –

Basira lowers the gun and holds up a hand. “Daisy.”

She growls at the sound of her name and Basira _knows_. It’s her.

Daisy snarls as Basira approaches with her hand raised. If Basira’s wrong about this, she’ll get her hand bitten off, or worse.

But Basira isn’t wrong. She knows she isn’t.

Despite the beast’s growls and snarls, the warning signs from the bared teeth and narrowed eyes, Basira doesn’t stop until she places a hand on her shoulder, buried in the thick fur. “Hey,” she says. “It’s me.”

Daisy is shaking. Basira doesn’t know why that surprises her, but the juxtaposition of this powerful monster trembling with what Basira can only assume is fear gets to her. Why should Daisy be afraid of Basira?

The monster doesn’t seem interested in attacking. She’s dropped her defenses now that she’s noticed Basira isn’t pointing a gun at her. She stands there, just shaking, as Basira comes to her side. “Daisy,” Basira says again, and she feels her voice crack. Barely enough to notice. She hopes Daisy doesn’t. “It’s me. It’s Basira.”

The monster whines and turns her head away. Basira buries her face in her fur and breathes.

She doesn’t know how long they stand there, only that before she even realizes what’s happening, she’s holding a woman, not a monster. Her Daisy is a real flesh-and-blood, skin-and-bone person, pressed up against Basira’s body as if to take shelter there, and she’s still shaking, but her arms make their way around Basira and she holds her tight.

Has Daisy always been this small? She feels fragile now, compared with the beast she was moments before.

“Basira,” Daisy says.

“I’m here,” Basira says. “I found you, like I said I would.”

“How did you know it was me?” Daisy asks. “I don’t know myself anymore.”

“I don’t know,” Basira says. “Just knew. Maybe I saw it in your eyes.” The realization of that truth unsettles Basira in a vague, nagging way, so she tightens her arms around her and asks “Who was the other one? The one that attacked me.”

“Julia,” Daisy responds shortly. “Or – used to be Julia. I don’t think she could be herself again even if she wanted to. Trevor’s dead. I killed him a long time ago, before the world ended.” Her voice is flat and toneless, none of the strange pride she used to take in her violent conquests.

Basira, somehow, had not thought of this as an ended world, only as a changed one.

Daisy sinks to the forest floor as if exhausted. Basira sits down in front of her, their knees touching, and Basira gets her first good look at Daisy. Her hair is unkempt and ratty, tangled around her face. Her clothes are dirty. When Daisy speaks, Basira catches a glimpse of red-stained teeth. “I didn’t know – I thought you were gone.”

It surprises Basira. “Why?”

“Everything else is.”

Basira shakes her head. “No – no, not everything. Jon is alive.” It slips out her mouth before she even realizes it, and Basira knows it’s true. She didn’t know she knew it, but she does. “Others too, maybe.”

Daisy is less affected than Basira might have thought she’d be, though she reacts almost imperceptibly to Jon’s name. “What is _alive_?”

Another good question. Basira doesn’t have an answer. “It doesn’t matter,” she says, moving to Daisy’s side and putting an arm around her. “We’re together. Isn’t that all that counts?”

Daisy settles in next to her, resting her head against her shoulder. “I don’t know.” There is so much pain in her voice, and Basira feels something for the first time since this all began, white-hot pain lancing through her body all because _Daisy’s_ in pain. Basira hears her swallow hard. “You made me a promise.”

“That I’d find you, yeah.”

Daisy’s body tenses against her. “That’s not all you promised.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Basira says sharply. “You knew I wouldn’t keep the other part of that promise.”

“Then what was the point, then?” Daisy’s voice is a whine. Animalistic. “I don’t want to be – to be _this_.”

“Nobody wanted this.”

Daisy doesn’t answer.

Basira sighs. “Daisy, even if I did – if I put my gun to your head and – “ She can hardly even get the words out. “I don’t know that you’d die. I don’t know what a gunshot to the head will even do to somebody in this world.” For all Basira knows, it would kill Daisy. But bodies don’t seem to function like they used to – Basira doesn’t know when she last ate or drank, and she’s surviving despite it. She’s not even thirsty.

If she can still kill Daisy with a bullet, she doesn’t want to find out. She doesn’t want to know her hands are capable of doing that damage. If she kills Daisy, then what purpose does she serve anymore?

Maybe killing Daisy would kill Basira too.

On some level, it’s always felt like it would.

“I’d rather it be you,” whimpers Daisy, moving closer to Basira and pressing against her. “You, rather than some other monster.”

The Eye could probably kill Daisy, Basira reflects. She doesn’t think there’s any death Daisy would hate much more than that.

“I trust you,” Daisy says.

Daisy’s eyes are wide and sunken in her thin half-starved wolfish face. Basira has the gun in her hand. Daisy presses her face to Basira’s shoulder.

“Please,” Daisy says.

Basira lets the gun fall from her limp fingers to the ground. “No.”

“You promised!” Daisy says ferociously, and there’s a bit of a growl in her voice, and ah, there’s the old Daisy. She’s always known how to put the fear of God in a person.

Basira takes Daisy’s face in her hands and ignores her glare. She strokes her cheeks, and Daisy’s eyes widen a little as her face softens. Those eyes – they’re not quite how she remembers Daisy’s, but they’re not quite monstrous. She’s somewhere in the middle.

When Basira kisses her, Daisy makes a noise somewhere between a yelp and a sob before kissing Basira back fiercely, hands clinging onto Basira for dear life. She’s practically in Basira’s lap, like she can’t get enough. Basira strokes her hands down Daisy’s back, and feels Daisy shiver as her fingers graze her bony spine.

They hold onto each other like survivors of a shipwreck, as if letting go will mean they lose one another again.

“If you won’t do it,” Daisy finally says, “then please stay. If you – there are things out there that could kill you.”

Basira still isn’t sure she believes in death anymore, but she’s sure that Julia isn’t the only being that could end Basira’s existence if she ended up on its bad side. Conversely, the Eye watches, and Basira can always feel its gaze. Unfeeling. Their existence is a blip in the scope of its knowledge, and if it _wanted_ –

“We can protect each other, then,” Basira says. “You and me like old times. You’ve got your strengths and I’ve got mine. Anything comes for us, we’re ready.” Just Basira and her Daisy, like it was meant to be.

Daisy grins suddenly, a flash of her old mischief. “I’d like to see something try.”

**Author's Note:**

> folks, I am not ready for this week's upcoming episode, and I had to finish this fic before it drops because I KNOW Jonny Sims is going to end all my hopes and dreams.


End file.
